


Growing Pains

by TearoomSaloon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, mild scar kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TearoomSaloon/pseuds/TearoomSaloon
Summary: She would keep slipping through the cracks in his fingers until he sorted himself out, however long that would take.





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> And so, Titus would grow  
> Tall and strong as an oak  
> Rainwater stuck in his head  
> It filled him with words left unsaid  
> Of all the things he might be  
> [Drifting at sea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sL1f9Q25sM)

They did little but flit passed each other since she closed the door on him. When the Force brought them together, she pushed back, angry, frustrated, disappointed. She had grown her powers to all but throw him from her mind, unable to sever the bond, but able to keep him away. He’d heard her voice crack and choke when she howled at him, launching him away.

It hurt in a way he wasn’t keen to admit. After being so lost and alone for years, he’d finally met someone who understood him, who could fill this long aching void that had opened angry and demanding in his chest. She could have been anything, everything. But he’d messed up and she didn’t want him, couldn’t stomach his face. He made bad, careless decisions one after the other, he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t stop.

“For a moment I had regretted giving you such a huge scar, but now I wish it were worse.” She was too exhausted to repel him this time, slumped with her head against his bed. The drowsiness of her voice suggested she was in a med-bay, narcotics heavy in her system. Bacta patches were wrapped tightly around her midsection, ribs encased in bandages.

“What happened to you?” He turned from his work, his heart leaping at the sound of her voice. ”Are you all right?”

“Shut up.”

“Who’s coming after you now?” It wasn’t his army. The First Order hadn’t a clue where the Resistance was based now—well, he had an idea, but he wouldn’t give her up.

“It’s none of your damn business, Kylo.” She’d switched back to that name after Crait and it stung. He missed the sound of his name on her breath, the softness she gave it. “Go away, please.”

“I miss you.”

“I should have killed you on Starkiller.”

His shoulders fell and he paused in his advance towards her. “You don’t mean that.”

Tears welled in her eyes, held back by tight, demanding determination. “No, I don’t.”

“Do you really not regret giving me this scar?”

She reached up to him, hand still outstretched when he sat beside her. He let her run her fingers down the damask and mulberry line. It molted light to dark like downy feathers from his cheek to his chest. His skin prickled and his breath shuddered when her body heat met his. Her thumb caught on the widest portion on his cheek, she sighed. “I regret it. I’m so sorry, Ben.”

“You haven’t called me Ben in months.”

“I thought you’d been taken from me. Gone forever, unable to be saved.”

“I’m still here. I’ll always be here.”

She laid her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes. Her breathing became shallow before she disappeared, apparition called back into the Force. His cheek remained hot even after she’d left, his body burning where she’d touched him. He’d meant it when he said he missed her. It was an understatement, but he was off-balance without her, lost and alone in a dark, frightening reality.

He wasn’t strong enough to resist the darkness by himself and he felt like a ship without navigation, circling aimlessly in space for direction. For purpose. The path he was following now wouldn’t lead him home to her.

In his dreams that night, he found himself chasing after her, always a few steps behind. Her laughter acted as his motivation, echoing through a heavy violet twilight. The stars above had risen only halfway, the moon hanging lazily too close to the ground. Her smile was made of pure radiance and he wanted to capture her light, bottle it like fireflies to keep him safe in the growing night, to light his path through the darkness.

“You belong to me, Ben,” she said softly when he caught her. “Come back to my side.”

“I need you here with me, not me there with you.”

“I’ll meet you in the middle if you can assure me you won’t break your promise again.”

“I can’t make that promise right now.”

She cupped his face, brought his forehead to rest against hers. “I will wait for you, but I can’t wait forever. Hurry. Please, love.”

He woke with the smell of her hair tickling his nose, her eyes burned into his mind. It was still dark in his room, the artificial starlight twinkling on his ceiling. With a sigh, he rolled over, skimming a hand down her back through the bond, only able to see her if he concentrated hard enough.

It took a few days for them to appear to one another. She was no longer actively pushing him away, but she was weak. Exhausted. Her wounds were more extensive than she’d originally let on, penetrating deep into the vulnerability of her abdomen, cutting up to her collarbones and down to her hips. She would recover fine, but she was woozy and drained.

She lay in his bed though she was light-years away in her own. She looked pitiful and his heart ached for her, wished her to feel an inch better than she seemed. He sat next to her, having relocated to her side when her voice had broken his concentration.

“How are you feeling?’ he asked, brushing a strand of limp hair behind her ear.

“Awful. I just want to be better.” Her eyes were drained of color when she looked up at him. “How was it, recovering from your bowcaster wound?”

“Also awful. I was delirious for a week. My dreams were fevered and weird.”

“What kind of weird?”

He flushed. He could remember them still, the emotions linked to those few nights stronger than what he’d felt in years. He caught wisps of the feelings still, ache and longing filling up his bones.

“They were about you. I couldn’t stop seeing you everywhere. Sometimes it looked like you were aboard the _Falcon_ , other times you were standing with your feet in the ocean, or you were happy to be caught in the rain.” He shrugged. There were other components to the dreams, but he didn’t want to speak them out loud, embarrassed.

She gleamed it from his mind. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been thinking about you like that.” Like a lover, like the other half of his fractured soul.

“I think it’s kind of funny, actually. I cut your face open and afterwards all you wanted to do was kiss me.”

He still did.

“You’re so complex, Ben,” she said softly, glancing up at him. “There are so many moving parts to you, I don’t know what to make of it all.”

“I’m lost myself.”

She disappeared again, hopefully to get some well-needed rest. He got a small amount of sleep himself, waking when he got overheated from her body heat. She was groggy and sluggish when she stirred awake, eyeing him strangely.

“You seem to hate shirts.”

“I don’t like sleeping in them.” He scrutinized her, taking note that she too lacked a top. Her upper body was wrapped in bandages and dressings. “You really took a beating.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You don’t have to lie to me.”

She exhaled sharply. “It hurts so badly that I don’t want to think about it. Tell me what your room looks like, take my mind off it.”

“It’s dark.”

“You’re a natural wordsmith, Ben.”

He rolled his eyes and suppressed a desire to nip her cheek. “It’s not very inviting. The carpets are white, my bedspread is black, and the sheets are red. I have a few paintings, but they don’t match the décor. I must have a million things on my desk I need to work on. I have a fish tank. It's huge, but there’s only one little fish—he ate the others.”

“He sounds lonely.”

“He is. I keep meaning to get him a companion, but I don’t remember what world I picked him up on.” He inched closer to her. “What does your room look like?”

“It’s not very personalized. I don’t have many possessions. There’s a chair near my bed, a nightstand with a chrono and a lamp. I stepped out of my shoes so it looks like a ghost is walking towards my bed. You take up most of the mattress at the moment.”

“I’m sorry I’m cramping you into a corner.”

“No, it’s all right, I kind of like it. I feel very safe being cocooned beside you.”

He watched her eyes, then her lips, moving with her into the kiss. It was slow but chaste, lingering in his heart when they broke apart. She looked up at him with hope in her gaze and blush on her cheeks.

“I’ve wanted that for a while now,” she said in a near-whisper, her fingers laced in his hair. “Since before what happened with Snoke.”

Her face dropped with that sentences and he rushed to lift her spirits, to kiss her with more ferocity, more want. “I’m going to come back to you, I just need time. I’m here, Rey.”

He fell asleep tangled with her; limbs curled together, heads pressed closely. His fingers idled on the skin of her back, butterflies trickling down his nerves when she hummed, content. She was gone in the morning, but she left a distinct impression on his heart, a lightness creeping into his veins.

They went without each other for a month. He caught snippets of her emotions, her feelings, during their blackout. Her voice drifted in his head before it had begun. _I’m sorry Ben, but I can’t let you know where we are, I can’t risk it._

That was okay with him for now. He could fair the darkness better knowing she would meet him on the other side, knowing she wasn’t angry, that he wasn’t being rejected from her light.

The next time they connected, it began with a pained yelp.

He stopped drying his hair, confused. He was alone in his quarters, far from anyone else’s room. A deep uneasiness climbed down his throat and settled in his stomach, drawing his attention to the source of the noise. She was half-dressed, arms stuck in her shirt. Huge crimson scars seared her skin from her chest to her stomach, thick and angry.

“I hate to ask you but my arm’s stuck and I can’t move it. Can you help?”

Carefully, with an embarrassed blush on his cheeks, he guided her arms through the holes, grateful her choice of shirt didn’t have sleeves. “Rey…”

“I’m fine,” she bit when she found her voice again.

“Can I see the wound?”

“After all that hassle to get my shirt on?”

“I can help again. Please.”

She sat reluctantly on the edge of his bed as he lifted up the cloth. There was a new gash on her back, restricting the movement of her arms. It looked nasty and deep. “What happened?”

“I fell.”

“And you didn’t get it patched?”

“I couldn’t see it and it didn’t hurt that badly until this morning.”

He pressed his hand to her back, channeling the Force to mend it the best he could. She was so far away in the galaxy, but she felt like she was beside him, next to him. If he could just make her hurt less, it would be all right. He kissed the sliver line left by his inexperienced hands, feeling the shiver that sparked across her skin.

“I’ve never loved before,” she started softly. “Have you?”

“Not like this.”

She leaned backwards, fitting so perfectly against his chest. Hope lingered in her eyes when she looked up at him. “That’s what this is, isn’t it?”

“If it weren’t, why would we be so drawn to one another?”

She shrugged. “Because we’re two halves of a whole? I can’t see this going any other way, you and me. I saw your future, I know this is how our story is supposed to go.”

“What did you see, exactly? When we first touched?”

She turned and pressed a kiss to his neck. “We were holding hands and you were smiling. You looked so happy, love. I want that future for you, one of laughter, not pain.”

“I think it’s time for me to come home.”

“I do too.” They kissed again before she began to disappear. “You know where to find me.”

He did. He’d kept her waiting long enough.


End file.
